[1]Let us now praise Galen Rupp: He’s the greatest-but-least-loved American distance track runner of all time. Indeed, as the 2012 U.S. Olympic Track Trials get started later this week, you could argue that Rupp has a chance to make the U.S. team in three different events--the 1500, the 5000, and the 10,000. I don’t believe any earlier American runner could say that.Rupp is a shoo-in for the 10,000-meter squad (he holds the American record, 26:48), and will likely come back less than a week later to fight with Bernard Lagat and Lopez Lomong for the top spot in the 5000.No one thinks of Rupp as a 1500/mile guy, but look where he’s sitting in the American 1500-meter standings for 2012. First, Russell Brown, 3:34:11; second, Bernard Lagat, 3:34:63; third, Galen Rupp, 3:34:75. He’s just a nose behind the first two, and well ahead of guys with names like Manzano, Lomong, Torrence, Centrowitz, Wheating, and Webb, to name just a few.Rupp is under-appreciated because he doesn’t win very often. That’s mostly a result of bad timing. He came of age in the mid-2000s just as the East Africans were rolling up a tidal wave of uber performances. Rupp hasn’t even won an Olympic Trials title yet; in 2008, he finished second in the 10,000 to Abdi Abdirahman. In Beijing, he placed 13th. In two World Championships (2009, 2011) Rupp’s best performance has been a seventh-place in the 10,000 last year in Daegu.But this could be Rupp’s season to shine. As his longtime coach Alberto Salazar has noted, Rupp has improved every year. Someone’s doing something right--coach, athlete, or both. Where do you go from 26:48? American fans can only hope. The Beijing 10,000 was won in 27:01.17.When Rupp takes to the track for the men’s 10,000 final Friday night in Eugene, he’ll get a huge hometown welcome. Like his spiritual predecessor, Steve Prefontaine, Rupp is an Oregon boy through and through. Grew up in Oregon, went to college at the University of Oregon, and now will take aim at his first Trials victory on the U of O’s storied Hayward Field, where he has raced so often in the last decade.Prefontaine won our hearts forever when he absolutely went for it over the final four laps of the Munich Olympic 5000 final. Though he faded in the last 50 meters, finishing fourth (with no East Africans in contention), Pre gave it his all, and then some.It would be thrilling to see Rupp do the same in London, even though the odds are much longer, given the certainty of an East African posse on his heels. There's also his training mate, Mo Farah, an early favorite in the London 10,000. History says that Rupp can’t win a medal by attempting to sprint at the end against these rivals.But what if, like Prefontaine, he puts it all on the line before then? What if, with eight laps remaining, he drops the pace to 61 seconds per lap, 61, 61, 61 ...? That would be a race for the ages, no matter what the ultimate outcome. It would be a race that Galen Rupp could wear proudly for the rest of his life.